


our last mistake

by alexanger



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: F/M, M/M, extensive turmoil about sin, more sad lams, why are you even reading this at this point, you know i cause nothing but suffering
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-17
Updated: 2017-01-15
Packaged: 2018-08-31 12:32:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8578693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alexanger/pseuds/alexanger
Summary: we are the only ones who knew thiskind of love, i promise you thisskies above had nothing to dowith this perfect kind of love.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Tracing the silver lines of the moon with our eyes  
> We both knew it was time  
> With your finger you traced every line, every angle of my face  
> Never wanting to leave this place

The first time is hesitant, and Hamilton stiffens beneath the broad hands gripping his lapels.

“Relax,” Laurens soothes, much in the way he speaks to the war horses. “Hush, dear. Why are you so frightened?”

The buttons on Laurens’s coat reflect the light of the candle, as do his eyes. They’re colourless in the orange light but the hunger in them is unmistakeable. Hamilton meets those eyes, grazes his gaze over the galaxies of freckles on the high cheekbones, and murmurs, “I’m not frightened. Nothing frightens me.”

Laurens leans in close, then, brushes his lips against Hamilton’s ear, and whispers, “that isn’t the truth, is it?”

It’s not, but Laurens doesn’t need to know.

(It’s loss. That’s the most frightening thing -)

It isn’t fear that makes him quiver, but anticipation. He’s hard, maybe harder than he’s ever been, but he knows that there’s something indecent here. He’s seen what happens to men who are caught together, rutting like animals, beasts without the quality of mind necessary to comprehend the concept of sin.

Perhaps it makes him a beast, then, to crave this.

So he slips his hand up along the firm muscle of his soldier’s chest, over layers of fabric, coveting every inch of him, and whispers, “take me, then, if that’s what you want -”

“What, take you our first time together? There’s so much to explore first, dear. If you’ll let me.”

Hamilton shudders at how deeply ravenous Laurens sounds, speaking so boldly through bared teeth. Without pausing to think, he shrugs off his coat, unbuttons his waistcoat, pulls off his cravat, shedding layers until he’s in his shirtsleeves and breeches and aching to feel those hands on him again.

“You’re beautiful,” Laurens says, hands coming to rest on Hamilton’s hips. “Hamilton -”

“Alexander,” Hamilton corrects, and immediately his face flushes hot with embarrassment.

But Laurens laughs, light and airy, and agrees, “Alexander, then,” and it sounds like music rolling off his tongue.

Hamilton isn’t foolish enough to think that he’s the first man Laurens has decided to claim, but as Laurens pulls him close and kisses him ferociously, he is absolutely foolish enough to dream that he might be the last.

 

* * *

 

 

He takes in his boy in sips, the long, lean soldier, quick to strike, slow to forgive. He drinks in the muscle of shoulders all too often tense with rage, and the hands too often balled into fists to punch.

Laurens is angry, deeply angry, but he passes it off by laughing through clenched teeth. 

"It's my father's," he tells Hamilton one day after a particularly rowdy scuffle with another soldier. "I got his freckles and I suppose I got his temperament too."

"Oh," says Hamilton, looking up from the split knuckles he's bathing with his own precious water. Liquid gold. He doesn't mind. 

"I try to keep it on a tether, but it escapes me. Perhaps one day -"

"- you'll stop to think?" Hamilton interjects, and then Laurens turns those angry eyes on him and he immediately regrets it. 

But the irritation disappears and Laurens fists a hand in his hair, filthy with sweat and dust (precious water, none to spare, but Laurens has split knuckles and they must be washed -) 

and he says, "oh, Alexander. If I'd stopped to think I wouldn't have claimed you, and yet -"

 

* * *

 

He is an angry man but a gentle lover, generous with his mouth and his hands, and when they come together the hunger in Hamilton quiets for a little while. 

"I'd been under the impression," Hamilton says after, "that perhaps sin wouldn't feel so -" 

"So good? My dearest, it's sin. It tempts with sweetness, and then -"

"Listen, you ass. I'd imagined it wouldn't feel so right."

Laurens looks at him, something unreadable in his face, and then takes Hamilton's face between his palms and kisses his eyelids, and his lips leave stars on the dark behind Hamilton's eyes. 

He decides privately - it isn't sin, can't be sin, when he's touched so reverently, like his flesh is being offered up to a just and loving God. This is the only time he believes in that God - when Laurens kisses his skin, makes him holy and precious and full of light. 

He gives himself over to the sensation. Fingers ghosting over his chest, his thighs, his throat, condensing his consciousness down to one sensitive line, grasping, stroking; brilliance, dazzling brilliance, a white heat, agony, ecstasy. 

_ Holy, holy, holy, _ screams his muscle, tense with the sharp pleasure-pain of release. His soul is a feast and he craves the devouring. 

Laurens holds him after, murmuring praise against his skin, knotting hands into his hair. Hamilton takes these moments as proof that God has made them for each other.

 

* * *

 

Night falls over camp, settling down like a heavy blanket. Velvet, maybe, Hamilton thinks, looking into the dark of the sky as he and Laurens sit together on watch. The fire is burning still; there are men beside it, drinking together, chatting, laughing in the way only hunted men can. Velvet falls that way, drapes thick; the sky is low and fat with the threat of rain, but for now it’s clear enough.

There have been so many nights, in the privacy of the tents or the rooms he shares with his soldier, that the thunder has shaken his marrow, and he’s cried as quietly as possible into the hard knot of Laurens’s shoulder -

Laurens shakes him out of his thoughts with a murmured, “we’ll be up for a while yet. Would you like to -”

“There are others awake,” Hamilton tells him, but he can’t hold back a smile. “Maybe when they’ve gone to sleep.”

“I suppose I’ll just have to be patient, then,” Laurens says, but he rests his hand on Hamilton’s thigh all the same.

They sit together like this as Hamilton drifts back into his mind. Velvet, he thinks again. The sky looks closer, heavier, more ominous. He hopes desperately that there won’t be thunder tonight.

The fire dies down. Chatter, indistinct, drifts to his ears. He doesn’t pay attention. Someone rises and kicks dirt onto it.

“Bedtime for them,” Laurens whispers. Hamilton shudders along the length of his spine; the hand on his thigh moves upward.

“Wait, wait,” he says, his voice quivering with amusement. Laurens squeezes his muscle and it takes all his strength not to shriek laughter; he squirms, torn between getting away from the tickling and leaning into the touch.

“What, does this  _ bother _ you?” Laurens asks, leaning in closer. “Are you ticklish, Alexander?”

The intimacy of hearing his name whispered so close takes his breath away, but there’s enough left in his lungs to whisper back, “damn you, you ass, you’re a pestilence -”

“Me, the ass? Perhaps you don’t want me to touch you after all -”

Hamilton glances at the camp, scans for any upright figures, and then grips Laurens by the wrist and drags the hand on his thigh upward. He’s half-hard, lazily thickening, and Laurens wastes no time unbuttoning the front of his breeches and reaching in to touch him.

It’s quick; Laurens rushes, pushes him with whispers of, “Alexander, do it for me - I need to feel you, dear, please,” and when he spills he spills white-hot and agonizing. He gasps for air, careful not to moan, and Laurens risks kissing him, just for a moment, deep and possessive, before buttoning up his breeches again.

“I’ll return the favour,” Hamilton promises. “In our tent. I know how you love my mouth -”

Laurens laughs like church bells. “You know, we’re the only ones who understand this,” he says.

“Understand what?”

“What we have - together. The way we are. No one else could possibly understand love like this.”

With the word laid bare like that between them, Hamilton feels his breath catch. Of  _ course _ he loves Laurens - loves him with a passion and depth he never thought he could comprehend.

He murmurs something and he isn’t entirely sure himself what it is. A thanks to God, that much he knows, for this beautiful and holy and perfect thing -

“No,” Laurens cuts him off. “Not even Him. This isn’t His. It’s ours.”

The heresy hangs heavy in Hamilton’s chest, a deep and delicious ache. “Ours,” he agrees, and Laurens kisses him, and kisses him, and kisses him.

 

* * *

 

There is thunder later that night, long overdue, as Laurens ruts into Hamilton’s mouth - but the weightlessness of the love between them buoys him up, and for once he doesn’t fear drowning quite so much.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> comments and kudos fuel my need for More Suffering. [come tell me how much you hate me for this on tumblr](http://alexangery.tumblr.com).


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Time took its toll and we lost any thought of control  
> We once had before closing the door  
> This was going to be our last mistake  
> A quick inhale  
> A fast intake
> 
> We tried to take it slow  
> But no  
> It wasn't an option in our state of mind  
> Anything that was left was left behind

Washington dismisses a soldier for being caught with a lover.

“The crime of attempted sodomy,” Laurens intones gravely, as Hamilton lays in his arms, half-naked and shuddering. “With abhorrence and detestation of such infamous crimes -”

“But that’s only sodomy.” Hamilton tries to laugh.

“Alexander -”

“Surely it isn’t such a crime if it’s my mouth, or your hands -”

“Alexander, you’re crying,” Laurens murmurs.

It’s true. Hamilton drags his arm over his eyes, angrily scrubbing away the tears.

“It won’t happen to us,” Laurens promises.

Hamilton draws a deep, shuddering breath. “We can’t keep doing this,” he says. “Not if that’s what will happen.”

“So - we’ll stop, then,” Laurens tells him.

“We’ll stop, then,” Hamilton agrees, and he presses his face against Laurens’s chest, breathing in the scent of sweat and dust and the unmistakeable smell that means Laurens and no one else.

For the last time, perhaps. So he breathes it in, holds it in his lungs like smoke.

He breathes it in.

 

* * *

 

But that isn’t the last time, can’t be the last time, because when Laurens looks at him their eyes meet like lightning. There are freckles behind Hamilton’s eyelids when he falls asleep, and in the night, when the dark presses down like a heavy blanket, he can hear Laurens breathing slowly in sleep. Sometimes when Hamilton wakes at night and wonders where he is, he reaches out to take Laurens by the hand and falls asleep again like that, holding on to that hand like a lifeline.

Hamilton gives in one night and whispers, his voice breaking, “John -”

“I thought you would never ask,” Laurens cuts him off. “Come here -”

He surges into Laurens’s arms, crashing like waves breaking. Laurens bites into the tender flesh over his nipple, sucks a bruise into it, dark and slow; Hamilton tangles his fingers into the cascade of curls and tugs.

“Don’t ever let me stop again,” he murmurs, and Laurens makes a cracked noise in response, one that might be love or mourning or regret or fear.

Everything, everything, fades, and they melt together, freckles spinning like stars in the heavy velvet night.

 

* * *

 

The ball is a strategic move, Laurens explains, helping Hamilton to straighten his waistcoat and polish the buttons on his coat. “You need a wife, and that’s the best place to find one - a political move. A rise in station for you. I’m sure you can find a girl whose father will give you a little pulling power after the war -”

“If I need any pulling done, I can just ask you,” Hamilton says, grinning obscenely, and Laurens laughs like church bells.

“You’d like me pulling your sword, wouldn’t you, Alexander?”

“If you draw mine,” Hamilton says, “I’ll gladly sheathe yours for you.”

“Hush. Learn to shut your filthy mouth,” Laurens says, and he kisses Hamilton soundly.

A trophy wife, something to point at for cover and to help him rise in power -

“My wife,” Laurens says, “is in London, and there she’ll stay. Far away from me, where I don’t need to pretend -”

“I hadn’t any idea you’d a wife,” Hamilton says, and God, it shouldn’t hurt, but it does. It stings.

“A wife,” Laurens agrees. “And a child. Frances. She’s three.”

Hamilton’s head spins. A wife and a daughter, and he’ll never be able to promise himself to Laurens in that way.

“Does she -” His mouth is dry. “Do you write to her?”

“Alexander, are you alright?”

“I hadn’t any idea -”

“It isn’t anything to concern yourself about, Alexander. She’s over there, and we’re here, and this is what’s real,” Laurens says, holding his hands tight.

The jealousy gnaws at him, but he meets Laurens’s eyes and holds his gaze. Hamilton’s breathing slows; he searches the face he loves for any hint of fickleness, but there’s only adoration there in those deep stormy eyes.

“We’re the only ones who know what this is like,” Laurens tells him, as he always does. “No one else knows love like this. Just us, Alexander. You and I.”

“No one else,” Hamilton agrees, as he always does. “Just you and I.”

 

* * *

 

And then he sees Elizabeth Schuyler -

She takes his breath away with every toss of her raven hair. Hamilton reaches out to take Laurens by the arm, and as his soldier steadies him, he whispers, “have you ever seen someone so beautiful -”

“Yes, every night,” Laurens says. “When I look at you. What's got you so enthralled? We're here for the politics of it.”

“Politics. Of course,” Hamilton agrees, but when it's his turn to dance with the lovely miss Schuyler, it only takes a single turn across the floor and he's in deep. 

She has brown eyes that seem to glow from within, and when she passes by a candle and the light catches right her eyes become the colour of honey dripping thick from the comb. 

“Thank you,” she tells him, as he twirls her, “for all your service.”

He has no idea what comes over him and loosens his tongue, but he breathes back, “if it takes fighting a war for us to meet, it will have been worth it,” and she peals with laughter. Laurens has a laugh like church bells of bronze, heavy, ponderous, commanding; miss Schuyler laughs like sleigh bells, musical, a crescendo to a flutelike finish. She laughs behind her gloved hand, and no, of course she isn't laughing at him - what deplorably bad manners that would be! She laughs at what an indulgence it is to hear such pretty words directed at her. 

“You don't fool me a bit,” she tells him. “I've seen soldiers and soldiers and soldiers. You're all the same.”

“Oh? And how is that, may I ask?”

“You're all out to rise. I see right through you, sir. You couldn't care less which Schuyler you snap up,” she says. 

He drowns in her gaze - honey, amber - and he murmurs, “perhaps that may have been true before I'd looked into your eyes.” It rings painfully true, and she ducks her head, colour rising in her cheeks. Her fingers tighten on his arm. 

“You have beautiful eyes yourself,” she says. “Perhaps you soldiers aren't all alike after all.”

 

* * *

 

That night, in Laurens’s arms, Hamilton drifts among dreams of honey amber eyes.

 

* * *

 

“I’m going to marry her,” Hamilton says, and Laurens laughs.

“You’re certainly determined. I have to admit, it’s an excellent move - Schuyler is a powerful figure, and the money certainly can’t hurt.”

“You don’t understand,” Hamilton says. “John -”

Laurens looks sharp at him, then, his eyes dangerous. “Don’t say my name like that, Alexander.”

He's promised himself and yet - 

He's sated when Laurens kisses him, and yet - 

He's content with his soldier's touch, and yet - 

Eliza, ethereal, otherworldly, calls to him in the motions of her body and the gentle yielding of her words, and he can't disobey. He explains this to the stormy man whose body taught him reverence and while there's pain and anger in Laurens's eyes, there is nothing but love in his voice when he gives his blessing. 

"But you're mine, nonetheless," Laurens tells him sternly. "I'll share, but I won't let go."

Laurens sinks his teeth in, then, at the junction between Hamilton's neck and shoulder, and the bruise rising beneath his lips is communion wine pooling just below the skin. 

His soldier is possessive, and he knows this, and he thanks God for this as he offers his body.

 

* * *

 

Eliza is a blessing and the marriage is a blessing, and between the agonies and horrors of war, there’s the soft welcoming of her body.

There's reverence with Eliza, like the reverence he shares with Laurens, as he kneels before her, barely wedded, to kiss the softness of her belly where it curves. Laurens is angles and hard muscle but Eliza is soft, in voice as well as flesh, and he wonders at the way it feels to press his lips to the skin that no one has ever kissed this way before. 

She knows, of course, about his Laurens, and she breathes to him, "did you kiss him like this, husband? Did you - oh - did you taste him?" 

He has licked her, then, just below the navel, and as her breath hitches he savours the salt on his tongue. Heavy with love for her, he whispers, "yes. Yes."

His thoughts drift to the angry man who holds his heart, and as he presses his tongue against her, as she gasps and pushes against him, he wonders at how strange it is to taste a woman on his lips.

 

* * *

 

“I’ll share,” Laurens has told him; “but I won’t let go.”

He lays with Eliza, his palm flat against her stomach, enchanted by her softness.

“I’d like,” he says, and then he stops to gather his thoughts. His tongue is weighted, now, heavy with exhaustion, and it takes him far too long to gather up enough words to say, “I’d like to - to keep both of you -”

“Oh, Alexander,” she says, her brow knitting.

“Just listen, Betsy. I have you here, at home, and him - him in the fields - and I can’t give either of you up.”

“It was my understanding that any affairs would end the moment you promised yourself to me - before my father, you remember, and before God - and you swore to be  _ my _ husband.  _ Mine. _ You aren’t a wife, Alexander - you certainly aren’t his -”

“I know,” he says.

“So what am I to do, with a husband who has been unfaithful since before we were even wed?” she cries.

He’s silent then, gazing into nothing. “Take me as I am,” he says. “I can’t be satisfied, Betsy. Better to know now.”

She makes a soft noise and rolls over, away from his hands, and he doesn’t attempt to pull her back.

 

* * *

 

But later he awakes to her laying her head against his chest and snuggling close. “If I have to share you,” she murmurs, “then I’d gladly do that, rather than not have you at all. But I am your first, Alexander. Always, I come first.”

And he whispers back, “no one could possibly understand love like this, Betsy. No one but us. Just you and I.”

She kisses his chest and hums agreement. “No one but us,” she echoes. “Just you and I.”

 

* * *

 

He comes back to Laurens and folds into his arms in the safety of their shared room.

“Your wedding night?” Laurens asks in the dark the first evening back together. “I appreciate your inviting me, but I presume the consummation was far more enjoyable without my presence.”

“Magical,” Hamilton says, and he chuckles deep in his throat.

“Care to tell me more?”

“Well, I’m so used to sheathing your sword that I’d never considered exactly how it would feel to sheathe my own -”

“And was it everything you’d dreamed it would be?”

“Better,” Hamilton says. “She’s - soft. Lovely. The gentlest heart. If I could possibly have satisfaction, it is in you and in her. I only wish I could have both of you at once.”

“I suppose that could be arranged, if the pretty Mrs Hamilton is in agreement,” Laurens says.

“Talk to me about it, John. Tell me what it would be like - to have the both of you -”

Laurens, beautiful boy, presses his lips to Hamilton’s ear and whispers. He weaves a tapestry of promises and closes his fist, drawing Hamilton’s consciousness down to a single point of his body.

Hamilton breathes two names as sensation rumbles through his spine; he breathes the names  _ John  _ and  _ Eliza _ in one long, drawn-out hiss, and then collapses against Laurens as though his bones have dissolved to nothing.

Laurens gives a single huff of laughter through his nose. “And to think that you were the jealous one,” he whispers, but Hamilton is already asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> come yell at me on [tumblr](http://alexangery.tumblr.com) about how im not finishing tytch instead of doing this


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With the war all around  
> There was no other sound  
> And our eyes they were stung  
> By the light of the sun that was fast rising  
> I grabbed your hand in mine  
> Our fingers intertwined
> 
> Any face that we saw was so unrecognisable now  
> And we didn't know how  
> Every familiar thing we once knew disappeared  
> I was trying to hear you through the crowd of people screaming  
> For their souls in a world they would obey you  
> And I looked the other way, knowing

Hamilton wakes often in the night, gasping and reaching out, and his wife isn’t always there to catch him as he falls. Sometimes, bless her heart, she half-awakens just enough to take his hand and hold him, ground him, as he weeps. It’s unmanful, tears streaming down his face, staining tracks along his cheeks, but he knows that she knows that it’s tears for his dear boy, his reckless boy, still in the field, still fighting, still uncertain. Eliza is not a soldier - she cannot wake like one, jarred out of sleep clear-eyed and ready. On occasion, in that secret dark place in his heart, Hamilton hates her for it.

Pauses between letters are unbearable and every time, every time, Hamilton wonders if the previous one is the last.

“Burn those, husband,” Eliza will chide him every so often. And he should, it’s the done thing - erasing the threads of a conversation long past, the shielding of his heart by destroying evidence of the peculiarities of its beat.

But each word is a blessing, every fondness a kiss stolen in the velvet dark of a shared tent. Every scrawl of  _ yrs for ever _ prints heavy on Hamilton’s heart and he cannot bear to let even a single one go.

For ever. For ever, for ever, for ever.

A letter always arrives eventually, and what is there to doubt? For ever.

A promise.

 

* * *

 

Hamilton writes back in floods. He’s irreverent and crude and far too obscene, but what does it matter? What does it matter - perhaps his soldier will think of him, think of his body and how eager his hands, his mouth, are. Perhaps Laurens will pleasure himself in the dark, Hamilton’s letter clenched in one hand. Each inflammatory line makes Hamilton wonder about Laurens’s hands, the hard lines of his body, the parts that make him gasp and plead.

And when he’s done writing, he finds his wife and lays with her, and if she understands his hunger at those times - if she knows why he’s so insatiable, why he urges her to be rougher, why he devours her like he’s been starving for  _ years  _ -

Well, it would be improper to challenge him on it, wouldn’t it?

 

* * *

 

Yrs for ever. For ever. For  _ ever. _

For ever is a promise, and Hamilton knows his boy, his reckless boy, his angry boy - he  _ knows  _ that a promise is a promise and that Laurens would go to the ends of the earth to keep it.

For ever, he whispers to himself at night in the darkness of the bedroom he shares with his wife, his beloved, the woman who keeps fully half of his soul beating tenaciously within her ribs, nestled next to her own heart.

The other half is in South Carolina, flying beside Laurens. Hamilton envisions great broad wings of bronze, catching the sunlight and flaring flame-like and wild. He imagines his soul spreading those long, heavy wings over Laurens’s chest as he falls asleep as night. The warmth of a soul - and of course it is nothing next to the warmth of another body - but in this way he shields him, keeps him safe.

_ My heart is with you, _ Hamilton writes.  _ My soul is with you. Always. For ever. _

And Laurens, beautiful Laurens, writes back:  _ What have I done to deserve such faithfulness? _

What other response is there but:

_ No one understands love like this. No one but us. We are the only ones who understand this love, my dearest Laurens. _

Hamilton can hear the church bell laughter in the irreverent response:

_ Not even Him. Yrs for ever. _

 

* * *

 

Hamilton is summoned by the General and he feels his heart leap. Not only at the prospect of action, the knowledge that his brilliance has finally been recognized - but at the knowledge that Laurens will be in his arms again soon.

“Don’t forget,” Eliza says, straightening his coat on the day he leaves, tears brimming bright in her eyes, “that I am your wife. And you  _ will  _ come home to me, husband. You  _ will  _ come home to meet our son.”

Hamilton captures her face in his hands and kisses her and kisses her and kisses her, and he whispers against her lips, “this love, my Betsy -”

“I know,” she laughs. “I know. No one but us.”

“No one but us. And when I’m with him -”

“You  _ say  _ you will be thinking of me, but I know that isn’t true. Don’t lie to me, Alexander. I  _ know _ you.”

Her tone is light. Her eyes are bright with tears she is too proud to shed.

He kisses her again, devours her, and she pushes him away and laughs and finally, a single tear escapes.

He walks out of the door, walks out of their home, and as he climbs onto his horse he makes the mistake of looking back at his wife - the proud woman who is shattered already, stooped, burdened with the knowledge of how hungry her husband is and the fear that he may not return.

He raises his hand and his heart screams  _ for ever _ but his mouth calls, “no one but us.”

“No one but us,” she calls back, and then he is gone, wind in his face, lifting him, carrying him back to his boy.

 

* * *

 

He reports to his General and he receives his orders and he commands his men and every night, every night, he sits down to write two letters.

One to his wife:  _ Betsy, my love. dearest heart my angel my only: No one but us, no one but us, no one but us. No one but us. _

And one to the man he has wedded only in his heart:  _ No one but us. I need to see you again. _

Laurens writes back -  _ I cannot get away, my dearest Hamilton, the action is thick and we are pinned down more often than not - but if you make your way here, perhaps during a lull - _

_ I can’t, I wish I could, I wish with all my heart - but perhaps soon. The General assures me the action will die down - _

_ Yrs for ever, my dearest Alexander, my regards to your pretty wife. I will see you soon. _

_ Soon, John. No one but us. _

_ No one but us. _

 

* * *

 

The end of the war nears and Hamilton looks at the faces of his men - the survivors, haggard and hungry. He lies awake at night and pushes away the thoughts of the men who did not survive. He knows many of them have wives. Children. He does not think about them.

He  _ does not _ think about them.

It doesn’t do to dwell on the shattered lives left behind.

Instead he thinks of his Laurens, of how they will meet after the war - the end is close, it is on the horizon, and Hamilton knows in his heart that they’ll come together after, continents colliding. He wonders if perhaps they can go to the sea together and stay there, find an inn, just for a few days, to lick their wounds and heal.

He wonders what it will be like to share time with his boy.

His boy, he keeps thinking, but Laurens is  _ not  _ a boy - he is nearing thirty, now, and Hamilton teases him in his letters, asks after his grey hairs and imaginary grandchildren.

_ If you keep up this nonsense, I won’t kiss your  _

Hamilton pulls back on the teasing. It’s a very alarming threat.

Every letter, still, ends with  _ Yrs for ever, _ and Hamilton presses them to his heart at night. He carries two letters with him, always: one from his wife and one from the man he has wedded only in his heart.

 

* * *

 

_ I have it, _ Hamilton writes.  _ We’re both by the ocean and we can meet in the middle - say, along the coast - and I will bring you home with me, and you will have the good fortune to become very well acquainted with my wife. _

_ Name the place, Alexander. Nothing will keep me from you once my time here is at last served. _

Hamilton writes back, suggests Charleston, writes ahead to a little inn there to make arrangements. 

_ Soon. Be still my heart - I cannot fathom how it will feel to hold you, to be held, once again. I suppose I will have to wait. Do these arrangements suffice? _

And then silence.

Silence.

Hamilton finds himself swept up in the action and all of a sudden there’s no time to write. He pens short messages to his wife, just  _ I’m alive and home soon there is so much action here Betsy no time to write no one but us _ and blood and bile and horror and the screaming of broken horses.

The screams echo in his dreams, and it’s the horses that stick with him rather than his men. There is salvation for the men; there is no salvation for the beasts. The screams of horses with broken legs, shattered ribs, spitting blood and tossing their heads and kicking and kicking and kicking.

They cannot waste their bullets on the horses.

Washington has lost horses - had them shot from beneath him - and the man remains unmoved, dispatches his animals with his sword and finds more. Hamilton cannot do that. He hears the screams in the night.

He composes letters in his mind as he drifts to sleep, massaging the pain of recoil from his wrists.  _ The screams, John. The horses. I cannot bear it. _

And then the war is over but the horses won’t stop screaming and his men beg for water, and as Hamilton’s horse shrieks he craves the strong arms of his soldier, his reckless boy.

A young man approaches with a single piece of paper and the handwriting is unfamiliar. The boy says “from the General,” and then he says “Laurens -”

He says  _ Laurens _ and the blood rushes in Hamilton’s ears and blocks everything else out and the horse stops screaming.

 

* * *

 

Hamilton is widowed and he cannot tell his wife.

He comes home.

He holds his son.

He burns the letters.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tell me im an awful person on [tumblr](http://alexangery.tumblr.com)


End file.
